


of blood and wine

by Goose_Boy



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Old Married Couple, Temporary Character Death, Trauma, attempting to cope, does grammarly count as a beta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goose_Boy/pseuds/Goose_Boy
Summary: Aegean blue and sea froth green and lightning crackle silver within his eyes, but there was red on Nicky’s face.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 2
Kudos: 126





	of blood and wine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintsurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/gifts).



> i have no excuses, i love these two men.

There was blood soaked into the knees of his jeans, sticky and hot where it spread quick across the floor. He could smell it even though the rubble and the dust that filled his lungs, iron cloying and heavy on his tongue as it slid between his teeth. His hands hesitated, he didn’t know where to look, the growing pool of crimson that he didn’t want to see or the way that oceanic eyes of aegean blues and sea froth greens stared blankly at the ceiling above. There was so much blood and he couldn’t breathe for it, turned his head aside for an instant where he couldn’t stand to look, to see. Such a thing never got easier, even after 900 years there were still things that turned his stomach and chilled his blood every time. 

Hands fluttering nervously in the air above his love’s face, but Nicky didn’t blink, Nicky didn’t breathe. Seconds where his own heart pounded desperately in his chest but all his love did was stare, the hot wash of blood seeping across the concrete. The start of a pale film over his eyes and there was a throat there around his throat, Joe could feel the crushing pressure of it as his own panic started to spiral into place. Because Nicky bled still where his body should have begun to knit itself back together, head wounds were always the worst but things never took this long.

It was with that panic that he reached out then, couldn’t keep his hands to himself anymore. For Nicky should have surged upright with a punched gasp by now, should have coughed up the clotted remains of his own blood and grasped at Joe for comfort and strength. He lay unmoving instead, unblinking and losing his precious blood and Joe couldn’t even if he should have. It was always hardest to touch at times like this, he could rarely bring himself to, and the knowledge of what Andy now lacked sat like a brand in his gut. 

“Nicolo?”

His skin was the just cool of a fresh corpse, soft yet still and his body empty. Nicky’s head lolled to the side with the faintest pressure and Joe would feel the scream building then, sudden and fierce in the back of his throat. Their skin never chilled like this, they never remained this empty for this long, and it was with grasping hands at Nicky’s jaw that he gave a faint shake to his head then. His body rocked with it, easy and empty as clouds slipped and rooted themselves over the oceans of his eyes. 

A thick, wounded sound cut at his throat and Joe bent low over the other man's body, like his own warmth would be enough. Like his shaking hands and gentle fingers would change anything, he choked on a sob when Nicky didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. Didn’t gasp awake beneath his touch and there, there was his screaming, the wild creature that lived at his core adrift without the other half of his heart arching up into his hands. 

"No, no, please."

All he could smell was blood, and his hands left smears of it across Nicky’s pale skin wherever he touched. He had painted upon the man’s flesh before, a canvas as often as he was a muse, but it had never looked like this before. It had never been like this, quick gasping sobs breaking from between his teeth as he stared down at the corpse that remained. At the empty where Nicky didn’t gasp his first waking breath, where Nico didn’t blink up at him with the delirium of rebirth, where his Nicolo went bloodless and cold. 

Burning eyes from the gas and dust and the tears that he couldn’t stop, Yusuf bent until his mouth pressed to a chilled forehead that he had kissed thousands of times. No huff of laughter, no slender fingers grasping at his arms or his shirtfront, there was nothing. Himself and his grieving where it rushed up to consume him and the corpse of a man who wasn’t supposed to die without him.

"Don’t leave me like this!"

Sunlight across his skin that turned the inside of his eyelids a lit orange and he blinked against it. Stared at the open window with his heaving heart and his quick, racing breaths like the sunlight could be enough to warm him. Warm salt swept air from the sea, the distant crashing of waves that called him to sleep in the first place. It was safe here in a way that few places ever felt, it was quiet here despite that rattling in his chest and the acrid sting of fear he could taste in the back of his mouth. 

Gentle movement in another part of the house and Joe levered himself upright in the bed, predatory where he slid to his feet before he could correct himself. Soft sounds of song, just far enough away that he couldn’t catch the language though he knew that voice, there was nothing to fear here, there was no need to hide. 

He had fallen asleep in their bed in their room with his love pressed against his chest only to rise without him, an occurrence that was as common as it wasn’t. He slept better in the heat, deeper, longer, slower to wake than his counterpart who easily became restless as the sun rose. He couldn’t feel evidence of kisses on his face but he knew they had been pressed there before Nicky had left him for the rest of the house. For sunshine, for breakfast, for something to do with the carefully contained energy within his bones that not even prayer could subside. It packed too deep, it set low on a campfire simmer for too long until his love ached with it and Joe would never ask him to stay in place when it only would have hurt. 

He stared out of their window at the Andros coast long enough to catch his breath and Joe swore quietly, fingers twisting in his curls as he turned. Left behind the clear of the sea and the sunwarmed of their bedroom to instead slip down the hall, and there was singing there still. A work song gone extinct except for on the lips of his love, Nicky sang to himself in curling Ligurian as he swayed before the counter. Bare chested and unclothed save for soft linen pants slung low across sharp hips, he looked like a piece cut lovingly from marble. Sharp shoulderblades and the slanted sun from the open windows gave shadowy definition to the muscles along his back and arms, svelte and sinew and raw power contained beneath pale flesh and sleep bruised eyes. 

Joe himself had carved him from marble, from clay, pieces in charcoal enough to last him through the centuries for all that the smudges never remained on his skin. He had captured his beloved in leisure just as often as he had in motion, the fluid lines a blend of wrath and elegance that his body became when propelled into action. 

There were statues somewhere in at least one museum, sketches without names and paintings done in half shadow where he had left things behind, but nothing compared to the man breathing before him.

“Are we lurking already, _tesoro?_ ”

Rounded sounds where Nicky had refused to master English beyond the limitations of his own accent out of spite and he smiled. Soft and slow within the bright warmth of their kitchen and he leaned against the archway with a sigh. Watched as the muscles along his spine and arms flexed and rippled beneath pale flesh, weight put into whatever had taken his attention on the counter. His fingers itched to trace those lines, his mouth to follow the dip and slide of bone beneath skin until Nicky sighed. 

“Lurking, _hayati?_ ” Tongue clicking against his teeth and Joe made a show of shaking his head for all that the other couldn’t see him. “No, no, never. Why would I lurk when I am lucky enough to watch you be kissed by the sun?”

A snort of laughter, more of a wheeze than any sound but he knew that laugh like he knew the smile that accompanied it. Nicky turned his head to find him and there, there was that smile, the pull to his lips and the profile of his aquiline nose. The Renaissance had never done him justice for all that Joe had tried, had spent countless hours tracing the other man's features until he knew the turn of his face even with his eyes closed. 

Aegean blue and sea froth green and lightning crackle silver within his eyes, but there was red on Nicky’s face. There was red splattered across the front of Nico’s chest and navel. There was red stained into Nicolo’s hands from fingertips to forearms. There was _red_ , and Joe’s legs gave out beneath him at the violent spill of color across Nicolo’s alabaster skin. 

Harsh fluorescent lights that turned everything steril and stark, the thick restraints that kept him bound to the medical bed that had become his prison. The heart monitor to his right hadn’t ceased its wailing, but his own gave a furious set of tones at the empty glaze in pelagic eyes and the _crack_ of Nicolo’s ribs as Kozak butterflied his chest open for access to the death still of his heart. The look of almost childish wonder on her face when Nicolo awoke with a pained cry only to seize within his restraints as his body tried to mend around the damage. As he bled across the open cavity of his own chest and Joe screamed and struggled and-

“ _-suf! Yusuf!”_ Weight in his lap, tacky hands cradling his jaw until all he could see were those eyes. Bright behind heavy lids and smudged with perpetual sleepless bruises in the hollows beneath. There was red there, a stain of it upon his cheek and the corner of his mouth and Yusuf could see it in his periphery on the hands that held him so lovingly, but Nicolo blinked and breathed. “It’s wine, _mio amore_ , it’s only wine.”

Words breathed against his mouth, their foreheads pressed together until all he had were his husbands eyes. He went slack then, hands desperate where they curled at slim hips and help Nicolo close, long legs at his sides with sharp knees tucked against his ribs. Warm to the touch, he was _warm_ , there was a healthy flush to his cheeks from the heat of the kitchen and the sun through their open windows. Burrowed tight against his chest until Yusuf could feel the pounding of both their hearts within his ribs. 

“It’s wine, _mio sole_ , I promise.” Their noses bumped as Nicolo spoke to him, softly rounded words slipping from his tongue as he spoke. Tender placeatments where wine stained fingers pet at his cheeks and temples and his jaw through his beard. Loving as his Nicolo could only ever be, but there was something backlit and wild in his eyes. “It’s a lovely port that we got at the market the other day, and I’m massaging it into lamb shanks so you can have _kokkinisto_ for dinner.”

 _Kokkinisto_ , and there was a dust of flour shot through the flop of Nicolo’s honey hair. The warm smell of yeast upon his skin, the rich spice from the wine and the rabbit wide of his eyes. His Nicolo had been in his arms when Yusuf himself had drifted off, but when was the last time the other man had slept? He raged in his grief, he knew this, dreamed and wept until his body purged the things that plagued him, but Nicolo closed rank within himself. Shored up his pain and his terror with silent screaming that never left his throat and wouldn’t let him rest until he broke. 

He ran, he didn’t cope, he swallowed it down and let it fester until it threatened to drown him, he _knew_ how the man dealt with such things. Yusuf _knew_ , but he hadn’t noticed, too tangled up in his own horrors that he’d let his love fall back onto such habits. 

“ _Nicolo_.”

A catch to his breathing, bright eyes quickly gone limpid and wet, how stretched thin his proud, stoic love must have been when just his name brought about tears. 

Yusuf held him closer, tighter, shuffled those long legs and those pointed elbows until Nicolo was bundled against his chest where he belonged. Precious and kept tucked to his heart as if that would be enough to heal the damage that he hadn’t seen. Nicolo clung like he had been starved for it, as if Yusuf hadn’t wrapped himself around the slighter man every single night, as if he had been _alone_ even with Yusuf right beside him. Fresh tears burned his eyes at the thought of just how he had let the man down, just how much Nicolo must have ached and felt unable to ask for what he so desperately needed. 

“I’m okay.”

A trembling whisper that sent knives across his heart, and it was his turn then to offer comfort and the press of kisses where Yusuf realized he hadn’t yet. 

“We will be.” 

Shivers across Nicolo’s frame and Yusuf clutched at him as if there were space between them still that he could chase away. No sunlight nor shadows between them, but he would try, he would do anything to get the shaking to stop, for Nicolo to not have to fall apart in his arms. This was healthy, this break before the rebuild could begin, it wasn’t until Nicolo fell apart that Yusuf could gather the pieces and help press him back together just as the other man had spent the last three weeks doing for him. 

There were burning tears along his collarbones where Nicolo had ducked his head, and wine stained fingers bit into his shoulders like a brand, a blessing. 

“We will be, _hayati_ , I swear it.”


End file.
